Section 15 Summary

Lines 163-165

To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.

• Back to our bird-pal again: it turns out that he's managed to keep up with the speaker's song the whole time. In fact, the bird even seems to have a connection with, or understanding of ("To the tally of"), the speaker's soul in line 164, which makes sense since the bird kind of symbolizes that soulful, mysterious world. Nothing is stopping that bird.
• Each note the bird sings to complement the speaker's song is not only "loud and strong" but also "pure" and "deliberate," which tells us that the bird definitely knows exactly what's going on. There's no miscommunication going on here. Each note is intended to convey a specific feeling and meaning. 
• Notice too that these notes are "filling the night" which gives the impression of there being some light in the darkness. The night isn't just an empty void anymore. It's filled with feeling and meaning for both the speaker and the bird. So the night, just like death, isn't a scary and unknown place anymore, thanks to the song we just heard.

Lines 166-168

Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.

• Well, the swamp doesn't look so bad here after all. In fact we smell some "swamp-perfume" in line 167 and we're guessing it doesn't totally smell like rotting plants. 
• But the point seems to be that, by now, the speaker has created an entirely new perspective for himself involving death, its mysterious-unconscious world, and those death-comrades who know the place all too well. So the consolation part of the elegy appears to be nearly complete at this point. 
• Things are "clear" and "fresh" for him and we certainly feel the change in mood, compared to our earlier sections of woe.
• So the gang is hanging out, having a little jam session, and totally digging the whole death thing without any tears. Sounds like a bona fide swamp-party, right? Yeah, we'd still probably take a pass…

Lines 169-170

While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.

• The speaker is seeing clearly at this point with his "eyes unclosed" and his sight that reveals a panoramic (widespread) view of everything that's going on. 
• We don't know just yet what these "visions" are, but we're guessing they have something to do with the war, Lincoln, the nation, and death in general.
• The speaker's voice even sounds a bit different at this point of the elegy, as if it truly is uplifted out of itself and able to see such a wide scope of "visions" occurring simultaneously. 
• We notice that he's taking on a sort of omniscient quality that sees all things. He's kind of like a super first-person speaker.
• Check out our "Speaker" section for more details.

Lines 171-173

And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,

• And indeed, the speaker sees "the armies" and all their "battle-flags" and smoke. So we're reminded once more that although the speaker has a more uplifted outlook on everything, there's still quite a bit of death and despair to be had.
• But we notice too in line 172 that he describes these visions as "noiseless dreams," which suggests that there's something unreal about the horrors he's witnessing. 
• It's as if he's partially removed now from all of the pain and suffering that we were previously (though temporarily) immersed in. His perspective here is "askant" (askew, not straightforward) which furthers the idea of not being entirely in touch with what's going on. 
• But he still sees those missiles that have pierced the battle-flags. There's some symbolism in that too, with the idea of each side (notice he's not being specific) having their pride, or sense of self, injured because of the war.

Lines 174-176

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.

• Here we have some more cataloguing with the repetition of "and" that describes just how "broken" and torn-up each flag has become. No side is left unscathed. 
• In fact, via the symbolism of only a "few shreds left" on the staffs of the flags, we get the feeling that the country will require a complete reconstruction. (Of course, that's exactly what happened following the Civil War. But the symbolism here makes the idea of reconstruction a bit more profound, we'd say.) 
• The remains of the flags are "torn and bloody," so the human cost of the war has literally been stained upon the very symbol of the country. 
• Notice too in line 176 we're reminded of "silence" again. But here it's not a peaceful silence like we saw before in the swamp.
• It's more a silence of numbness that's evoked by those bloody remains of the flag. The bad times are back, folks, and in a big way.

Lines 177-179

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, 

• It looks as if we're being burdened by the cost of war some more with the "myriads" of "battle-corpses" and "white skeletons of young men." The speaker is certainly reminding us of where we are and what time it is, just in case we forgot during all the lovely death stuff.
• Since those corpses are "young men," we have the added horror of knowing the life that's been wasted on war. The future of America has been partially lost due to the countless young lives that will no longer be able to contribute to the lively progress we saw in earlier sections.
• Through more anaphora, the speaker keeps repeating, "I saw," in order to make the imagery here a bit more real to us. We're no longer looking "askant" like we were earlier. This is all right in front of us, plain to see.
• The repetition of "debris" also serves to add another layer of carnage to the scene here with debris being covered by more debris. There aren't any lilacs around here to push the debris away. Instead we're really feeling the cost of war without the silver linings we saw earlier. The speaker is looking to show us the reality of war with the debris of "slain soldiers." They litter the land just like the debris after a big storm, only these are real lives that have been lost. Sad.

Lines 180-182

But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,

• There's Whitman again, giving what we "thought" a different more optimistic spin. Here we notice that all those dead guys aren't the ones suffering. It's the ones who are left behind that are suffering.
• Instead those dead soldiers are "fully at rest." The speaker repeats "suffer'd" a few times in order to remind us that it's "the living" who remain who suffer, just like the speaker suffers.
• So, just when we thought death is where all the suffering is located, we realize that it's the opposite. Life is where all the suffering happens. But we also have in the back of our minds all of the beauty life has to offer, which the speaker has been thoroughly describing in this poem. We know life is not all about suffering at this point.

Lines 183-184

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

• We get some more reminders of the folks who really suffer because of war and death. Here we have the wife, child, and comrade that remain. We even have the entire army that suffers alongside its fallen soldiers.
• The "musing" part of the comrade also reminds us that the ones left behind must find ways to cope with their grief. Though we don't get any specifics here, we can imagine the sorts of things that comrade resorts to in order to cope with his grief.
• The mood continues to be again a bit more somber than the poem's previous sections. But all of the fluctuating between feeling uplifted and then feeling sad again is a stark indication of the ways people grieve. We notice it's never a straightforward process, but is rather an erratic up and down rollercoaster of emotions.